Testimony Under Way In LeFlore County Child Neglect, Sex Abuse Case

POTEAU — According to trial testimony Wednesday, a Monroe father of nine accused of multiple felony child neglect and child sexual abuse charges repeatedly begged to be sent to counseling instead of jail during an Oct. 24, 2011, recorded interview with an investigator.

The 62-year-old man repeatedly avoided saying whether he’d had sexual conduct with some of his daughters.

“I’ve told you I touched them. I wrassled with them. I might have done the wrong thing,” the father said on the lengthy taped interview played for the jury.

Later, he said, “I can’t admit to something I don’t know if I’m not sure in my own head that I done. … Whatever my kids say, I’ll go along. … I’ve had a lot of trouble in my life. My first wife, she was lying. … I reported it, but they don’t care who did it. It’s always the father who is the bad guy.”

In the interview, the man alleged that when he lived in Missouri, his first wife accused him of sexually abusing their toddler. He said the girl came to him, complaining her crotch hurt, and he was inspecting it to see why when his first wife walked in on them.

Before this portion of the recorded interview, LeFlore County District Judge Jon Sullivan instructed the jurors they would hear evidence of alleged previous child sexual abuse, and they may consider it in the context of how it applies to the defendant’s guilt or innocence, but they may not convict him solely on that evidence.

The Times Record is withholding the parents’ names to protect the identities and privacy of the nine children involved. On Friday, the 41-year-old mother entered a blind plea of no contest to her own charges — nine felony counts of child neglect and three counts of enabling the sexual abuse. Her sentencing is set for 1 p.m. Feb. 22 before Sullivan. The father’s trial continues this morning.

District Attorney’s Office investigator Travis Saulsberry asked on the father’s recorded interview, “What could you have done that made them think you wanted to have sex with them?”

One teen had a yeast infection, and he put the medicine on her because she refused to do it for herself, the father said.

Asked why the girl’s mother hadn’t applied it, the father responded, “That’s a good question,” but he did not elaborate.

Previous witnesses — D.A. Office investigators Saulsberry and Jody Thompson, then Poteau police officer Vicki James and Department of Human Services Child Welfare investigator Amanda Lovett — testified they’d gone to the family’s Monroe home on Oct. 20, 2011, to check on the children because the family’s name had come up in the investigation of another case, one that involved child pornography.

Saulsberry testified that although they visited the family’s Monroe property on Oct. 20 and 21, 2011, initially regarding the other case, during his time there, his focus changed to the Monroe family’s children.

The investigators testified they found the nine children, then ages 3-17, living with their parents in a camper heaped with trash, spoiled food, dirty dishes and cockroach feces, reeking of a urine or ammonia smell. The children themselves, they testified, were dirty, wearing filthy, ill-fitting and inappropriate clothing. The parents said they were living there while similar conditions in the home were being remedied.

Lovett testified the children smelled bad, had dirty uncombed, lice-infested hair, yellow teeth and foul breath. One child was pregnant. And in follow-up interviews the child made a disclosure that took the investigators back to the family property, she testified.

Lovett said that child, serving as a guide to that search, remarked on how changed the property was since she’d last been there. Then when they came up on a pile of brush, the place she’d said the object was, “gasped and said, ‘I guess he moved it.’”

In an earlier court hearing, investigators testified the child alleged she’d previously given birth to a stillborn baby, that her father delivered it and then buried it on the property.

In cross examination, defense attorney Brecken Wagner repeatedly verified with the witnesses that uniformed police officers had questioned the family although there had not been any allegations of abuse at that time. Wagner also verified that the children were later separated from their parents and questioned late at night by strangers in a strange environment, the LeFlore County Child Advocacy Center.

The children were taken into DHS custody on Oct. 21, 2011, after the family was located at a Mena store after failing to turn up as promised for interviews at the advocacy center.